Talk
by L'il Senzu
Summary: Just Roger thinking about Mark and the fact that he never really talked. Roger POV. no slash. no specific time period. slightly angsty. oneshot. please readreview. flames accepted.


This fic just came to me a couple nights ago, while i was trying to write a completely different fic for a challenge. The challenge is still unfulfilled, but other ideas keep coming to me at least.

anyways, this is my first Rent fic, and i only saw the movie and i read through theplay script online to get a better feel for the characters and get the facts straight, but i've never seenan actual production of the play, so that explains why i might notget the characterization perfect.

This is just a one shot, and rather short. Its just Roger thinking about Mark, basically, and regretting in a way. There is **no slash**, although I do love M/R, its not going on in this fic. If I ever get my challenge fic done, there will be slash in that, in case anyone is interested.

Reviews are very nice, and I accept criticisms and flames, if you feel it necesary.

I do not own RENT or any of the characters therein.

Talk

There were some things Mark just didn't talk about. His parents for one. He talked about his mother sometimes, mostly just after one of her calls, and mostly it was just complaints about how annoying she is. He never mentioned his father though, and I knew better than to bring it up. I don't pry.

His feelings were another. Mark didn't talk about his feelings, and he didn't let them show all the time, either. Mark hid behind that camera of his. Not completely, it wasn't like he wasn't a full person or anything, but he did hide things. It's hard to tell what someone is feeling when they have a camera shielding their face and the only words out of their mouth are either sarcastic remarks or part of a narration. I knew better than to talk to him about this though. Nobody really talks about their feelings until they're three seconds from a breakdown, or already broken, anyways. And anytime I mentioned him and his camera, it always came out as an accusation of him hiding from life, and that never went over well. So I let it be.

Come to think of it, Mark never really talked about himself that much at all. Sure, we talked about everyday things, his love life with Maureen and a couple other equally disappointing girls after her, his work, his opinions about various things like movies, politics, bands, etc…but talk never really went further than that.

Neither of us ever mentioned, for instance, that I had divulged my entire childhood, in bits and pieces over numerous conversations, but he hardly mentioned his. If he did, it was just a small tidbit of information about a childhood girlfriend or something about one of his teachers.

Neither of us ever mentioned, either, that he had a tendency to drink too much, when we had it, or that we both knew about his habit of mixing aspirin and alcohol and how dangerous it could be. We never talked about the fact that he liked to bite his nails until they were gone and his fingers bled, and then he bit his fingers, and for some reason, although I knew that I should have at least talked about this, we never brought up the one time that he had left one night and just started walking.

I was woken up, at about seven in the morning, by Mark's voice on the answering machine saying that he was in Central Park. I couldn't believe it, but I went down there anyways, spending the rest of my money on a taxi. Sure enough, I found him sleeping underneath a bench, on the skirts of Central Park. At least, I should have made him explain that, but for some reason I just brought him home and let him sleep.

I guess I always figured that if it was important, he'd talk to me. We didn't talk about my problems regularly, but when I needed to talk he was always there, ready to listen, able to understand it all. I always assumed that he felt the same freedom to talk to me about anything, but he never brought anything up so I never asked. After all, there are just some things Mark doesn't talk about and I always just accepted that to be the way things were.

But I was wrong, that wasn't the way things were, at least not how they should have been. If only I had pried, if only I had asked about the things he didn't talk about, if only I had just questioned any of it, even just once, maybe he wouldn't be here right now.

Here, lying in that starched hospital bed, unconscious, with his wrists bandaged. If only I had tried to get him to talk, maybe he would have had something to say.


End file.
